Black and minority ethnic access to HE

The study will revisit the contested issue of entry into higher education. It builds on the team's previous research which indicates that black and minority ethnic applicants tend to be filtered into new universities due partly to apparent biases within the admissions process.

These findings have been disputed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), though its reanalysis leaves important substantive and methodological questions unanswered.

Further analysis is particularly important because, though the possibility of biases remains, recent developments have acted as a break on the possibility of reform.

Using data collated by the Universities Central Admissions Service (UCAS), the study aims to identify what it is that is driving differential patterns of entry, with a view to making practical recommendations that will promote more balanced representation of black and minority ethnic groups across higher education as a whole.